Reduce Impulsivity with Working Memory Training

Impulsivity: Actuated or swayed by an involuntary feeling or mental state.

Conquering Impulsivity

Our working memory capacity plays a critical role in combatting impulsivity1. When our working memory is compromised we tend toward impulsivity. Working memory training increases working memory capacity by promoting the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. This new growth extends our attention span and increases our ability to exert will power, reducing our tendency to impulsivity.

The Science: Working Memory And Impulsivity

Researchers in the Netherlands2 recently showed that working memory training helped people reduce impulsivity and thereby reduce drinking by about 30%. The scientists concluded that working memory training strengthened the subjects' control over subconscious and conscious impulses.

After just one month of working memory training the subjects in the Dutch study increased their will power and reduced their drinking from an average of about thirty-five to about twenty-five drinks weekly.

Impulsivity | Working Memory Exercises

Intensive working memory training promotes adult hippocampal neurogenesis. In 2008, Scientists from the Universities of Michigan and Bern discovered that they could improve overall cognitive ability with intensive working memory training. The team demonstrated that just nineteen sessions of brain training using the "dual n-back" working memory protocol increased concentration and attention span by more than forty percent.

Impulse Control | Research

How do we keep thoughts in our mind? It seems a simple question until we remind ourselves of the brain as a dynamic labyrinth of neurons constantly firing and receiving electrical signals. But researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe they’ve figured out how working memory holds a piece of information. The holder of a [...]

Dutch scientists have found that working memory training can reduce drinking for problem drinkers. The researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands concluded that working memory training may be an effective strategy to reduce drinking because it increases control over automatic impulses to drink alcohol. Under the direction of Katrijn Houben, the team recruited problem [...]

Our own customers and previous published research studies have demonstrated a strong connection between working memory training and a reduction in depression. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science suggests that people with depression find it difficult to move on from depressive thoughts. The study centered on [...]

Various brain fitness studies have shown that working memory capacity plays a key role in our ability to control our impulses. Now brain fitness researchers from Case Western Reserve University have published a fascinating study that ties our working memory capacity to our resilience in the face of criticism. The CWRU brain fitness team measured [...]

Novel research at UT Southwestern Medical Center hints at new hope in combating addiction and dependence. The researchers’ experiments indicate that stimulating an increase in neurogenesis (brain cell growth) might help prevent addiction, dependence, or relapse. This is fascinating in the context of intensive brain training with programs such as Brain Fitness Pro. Parallel studies [...]

This report (Nintendo for Scottish prisoners) has already raised eyebrows, but I think the fundamental concept of helping prisoners improve their core skills has merit. It’s also intriguing to think what a more serious brain training program could do for someone who has impulse control problems. Working memory capacity has been shown to be crucial [...]

Scientists studying willpower have used brain scans to show that people who seem to be able to exert willpower engage a region of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Brain scans of those who don’t display willpower showed no activation in this region. The link to working memory – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is [...]